Jeffray turned at last and remembered Bess. He had almost forgotten her in the fierce emotions of the moment, and in the vision of Lot lying bleeding on the grass. She was still kneeling on the stone bench at the end of the terrace, her elbows on the balustrading, her face between her hands. Wilson’s eyes were also fixed upon this solitary figure, suggesting in its bleak aloofness some tragic influence working silently upon the unfolding of the play. The painter glanced inquiringly at Jeffray, nor was the significance of the look lost upon his friend.
“I hope so, sir. I have seen something of the world.”
Jeffray, his shirt stained with Lancelot’s blood, passed back down the stairway to the lawn, and took his coat from the sundial where he had left it. Bess followed him from the terrace, wondering what had caused the quarrel between Richard and the big man with the red face.
“Thank God, you are safe,” she said, proud of him in her woman’s way. “Why did you fight? Tell me; I do not understand.”
Jeffray stooped and picked up the sword that lay on the grass where he had thrown it when Lot fell.
“Do you know who that man was?” he asked her.
“Because I had refused to marry his sister.”
They stood silent a moment, looking at each other, each knowing by intuition what was passing in the other’s mind. A great weight of doubt had been lifted from Jeffray’s heart. Life had taken a simpler meaning for him now that Lot Hardacre’s blood had set the seal of enmity upon the past. The action of an hour had sundered him irretrievably from Jilian and brought him nearer to this child of the woods.
“Bess,” he said, holding his sword between his hands, “I never loved this woman. Do you believe me when I tell you that?”
She colored, and her eyes flashed up to his.
“It is you whom I love, Bess. Now, before God, I have told you the truth.”
He set the sword by the point in the grass, reached out and took her hands.
“I want to do what is best for you,” he said.
“We have come to life’s crossways, dear; give me a night to see my way.”
“I trust you,” she said, simply. “I trust you with all I have.”
He led her across the terrace to the house, and into the blue parlor beyond the dining-room. There he left her by the open window with the scent of thyme and woodbine floating in upon the air.